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Staff profile

Overview

Dr Katie Harling-Lee

Research Postgraduate

Affiliations
Affiliation
Research Postgraduate in the Department of English Studies

Biography

I completed my PhD, funded by the Wolfson Foundation, at Durham University in 2022 with no corrections, under the supervision of Dr Samuel Thomas, Dr David Ashurst (English Studies), and Professor Martyn Evans (Music Department; retired Oct 2019). My doctoral thesis identified a distinct cultural trend for contemporary novels which feature thematic descriptions (rather than formal imitations) of music. I termed these ‘musico-literary novels’, proposing that to read a text as a musico-literary novel requires an interdisciplinary approach that draws on studies in musicology and music philosophy to interrogate the nature of musical performance and music listening in the literary text. While grounded in literary approaches, my project was fundamentally interdisciplinary, drawing on conflict and trauma studies to analyse six musico-literary novels set during political or armed conflicts ranging from Mao’s Cultural Revolution to the Siege of Sarajevo and the War on Terror. My analysis of these novels revealed how the pressure of conflict places music in a unique, extreme context which tests understandings of music’s importance, significance, and limits. I am now revising my thesis for publication as my first monograph, and working on my next postdoctoral research projects which delve into the related topic of silence in contrast to my previous music-themed research.

While my primary area of research is in Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies, I also have research experience in Old Norse literary and translation studies, which was the subject of my MA dissertation, and informs my tutorial teaching on the module Epic and the Literature of Legend. My MA research formed the basis of a peer-reviewed publication, available online, and titled, ‘The Mediation and Re-creation of Guðrún Gjúkadóttir in English Translations of the Poetic Edda in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries’, published in Postgraduate English, November 2018.

Publications and Appearances

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Book Chapters

  • Harling-Lee (2021), ‘Écouter pour survivre: musique classique et conflit dans le roman musico-littéraire’, inVelasco-Pufleau and Atlani-Duault, eds, Lieux de mémoire sonore (Paris: Éditions de la MSH)

Book Reviews

  • Harling-Lee (2021), Invited Review of Snaith, ed., Sound and Literature (2020), Modernist Cultures, 16(2), 289-94

Selected Conference Papers

  • ‘Listening to Music and Silence from the Quaker Perspective in DCF’s The Deepening Stream’, Scottish Network for Religion and Literature/Theology and Ethics Seminar (Edinburgh), Feb 2024
  • ‘Life, Music, Quaker Silence, and World War I in The Deepening Stream (Canfield Fisher)’, Sounding Modernisms: An Interdisciplinary Conference (London), June 2023
  • 'The Transgressive Terror of Music in Orfeo (Powers, 2014)', BACLS-WHN 2021 (online), Sept 2021
  • ‘Listening to Survive: Classical Music and Conflict in the Musico-Literary Novel’, Rewriting War and Peace in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, Barcelona, Spain, Sept 2021 (postponed from 2020 due to Covid-19)
  • 'Listening to Survive: Sound and Music in the Literary Soundscape of Conflict', NeMLA, Online, March 2021
  • (Accepted) ‘When Music Meets Literature: Defining the Contemporary Musico-Literary Novel in Times of Conflict’, English: Shared Futures, Manchester UK, June 2021 (postponed from 2020 due to Covid-19)
  • 'The Marginalised Operatic Voice in Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto', WMAF, St Andrews/Online, Sept 2020
  • ‘Defining the Contemporary Musico-Literary Novel in Times of Conflict’, NeMLA, Boston MA, USA, 5-8 March 2020
  • ‘The Creative Possibilities of Guðrún’s Emotional Ambiguity in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century English Translations of the Poetic Edda’, 13th Bergen International Postgraduate Symposium in Old Norse Studies, Bergen, Norway, 10 April 2019
  • ‘The Mediation and Creation of Emotion, Endurance, and World-Views in Translations of Eddic Poems Relating to Guðrún Gjúkadóttir’, Norse in the North, Durham UK, 9 June 2018
  • ‘Music, Identity, and the Self in Three Contemporary Novels: "Does it alter us more to be heard, or to hear? Is it better to have been loved, or to love?”’, Josephine Butler Research Forum, Durham UK, 23 April 2017

Public Lectures & Workshops

  • ‘Music and Quaker Silence in The Deepening Stream’, The Persephone Book Festival, Bath, April 2024
  • 'R S Thomas: Poetry for Lent', public workshop, St Michael's Church, Linlithgow, and Greenbank Parish Church, Edinburgh, Oct 2023
  • ‘Classical Music, Conflict, and Identity in the Contemporary Novel’, Late Summer Lectures, Durham UK, 25 September 2019
Teaching

Durham Teaching 

Teaching Assistant, ENGL1041: Epic and the Literature of Legend (2019-22, 2023-25)

Teaching Assistant, ENGL1061: Introduction to the Novel (2020-21, 2022-23)

 

Additional Teaching Experience

University Tutor, School of Arts and Creative Industries, Edinburgh Napier University 

Associate Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, University of Northumbria

Associate Fellow of AdvanceHE (Higher Education Academy) (AFHEA)